2014

Drag Coefficient Measurement

REVIEW OF PREVIOUS LEARNING
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1. INTRODUCTION
Relative motion between a particle and a surrounding fluid always involve fluid exerting
drag upon the particle. Drag force is exerted in a direction parallel to the fluid velocity or
opposite to the particle velocity. For steady flow, the drag force upon the particle is given as the
following equation (Green and Perry 2007).
2
C D A P ρu
FD=
2

Where FD= drag force

CD= drag coefficient
Ap= projected particle area in direction of motion
ρ = density of surrounding fluid
u = relative velocity between particle and fluid

The drag coefficient is a dimensionless quantity that is used to quantify the drag or resistance
of an object in a fluid environment. It is used in the equation above to find drag force, where
high drag coefficient corresponds to large hydrodynamic or aerodynamic drag (Moaveni 2011). It
is a function of several parameters such as shape of the body (surface area), Reynolds number of
the flow, Froude number, Mach number and roughness of the surface.

The drag coefficient is an extremely crucial variable that determines the drag forces involved
in many aerodynamic applications such as aircraft design and automobile designs, and it helps
professionals in those fields to come up with the most energy efficient designs by minimizing the
drag force or utilizing it efficiently (Benson 2010). There are many applications in chemical
engineering that make use of drag coefficients as well. For example, drag coefficients are used in
the calculation of particle terminal settling velocity of solids and therefore used where the
suspension or settling of solids particle will occur in chemical unit operations. The particle
terminal settling velocity in turn can be used to calculate the hindered settling velocity, so it can
be used to help design solid-liquid mixers, clarifiers, thickeners, slurry transport in pipe (i.e
design a slurry pump), solid-liquid filters. It can also be used to design pneumatic transport lines
and used to help design unit operations where solid-fluid (liquid or gas) will need to be mixed,
transported or separated.
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The values of the drag coefficient for different body shapes subjected to different flow
conditions (laminar, transition and turbulent) are available in a wide range of literature. There are
also hundreds of correlations relating the drag coefficient to the particle Reynolds number and
measure of sphericity. Normally, the drag coefficients are determined through experiments. For
this project, the topic of interest involving drag coefficients is the flow over spherical objects.

2. CONCEPTS
2.1. Drag Coefficient of Spheres
Flow over spherical solid is one of the important cases to analyze for efficient chemical
engineering design; especially in determining the settling times of chemicals. At low Reynolds
numbers (i.e., Re << 1), there is no flow separation, and the fluid is stuck to the sphere as seen in
Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Flow over sphere in low Re regions

Drag coefficient at low Re can be simply predicted by the linear function as follows;

24
CD=
Re

At moderate Reynolds number between 1000 and 200000, a boundary layer is formed around the
sphere as seen in Figure 1.3. A wide wake region is formed at the downstream of the spherical
object.

Figure 1.2 Flow over sphere in moderate Re region

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The drag coefficient decreases with the increasing Re and at this region of Re, the drag
coefficient becomes constant where,

C D =0.44

This region is known as the Newton region.

Increasing the Re above 20000 will significantly reduce the boundary layer around the sphere as
shown in Figure 1.4.

Figure 1.3 Flow over a sphere in highly turbulent region

The flow separation is delayed and the fluid forms a relatively narrow wake region in which the
flow is highly unsteady and turbulent. For turbulent boundary layer flow, the drag coefficient is
decreased further until CD = 0.06 at Re = 4×105. Hence, a turbulent boundary layer developed
along the sphere will reduce the drag force exerted upon the solid. The graph of drag coefficient
of sphere as a function of Reynolds number is as illustrated in Figure 1.4 as follows;

Figure 1.4 Drag coefficient of a sphere as a function of Re

First, to find drag coefficient of a sphere, assumption is made that a solid smooth sphere
is moving along the direction of gravity. The forces acting on the sphere are as illustrated as
follows;
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FD

Figure 1.5: Free body diagram of spherical object

Where W is weight
FD is drag force
Fb is buoyant force
For an object at terminal velocity,
Drag Force + Buoyant Force – Weight = 0
Therefore, the drag force can simply be found by doing force balance with above equation where
Buoyant force, Fb =V o lu m e   o f   S p h er e,  V   ×D en si t y  o f   F lu i d ,ρ  ×g

Weight, W=V o l u m e  o f   S p h e r e ,V  ×D e n sit y   o f   S p h er e, ρ s×g

For spherical objects, if Re<<1, the drag force can be found by Stokes Law’ as shown

F D =3 π μf lu i d U D

Where U is terminal velocity

D is diameter of sphere
μf l u i d is viscosity of liquid

By equating this equation to the drag force found from the force balance, the terminal velocity
equation can be written as
2
D g
U= ( ρ P−ρ )
18 μf l u i d

Knowing the velocity of sphere, Re can be found and subsequently CD can be determined from
the graph in Figure 1.4 or from Stoke’s Law equation. However, if the flow is not in the Stoke’s
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region, another method involving Archimedes’ number, Ar, has to be utilized. Ar is simply found
by the following equation.
3
D ( ρP −ρ ) ρ g
A r= 2
μ

Depending on the region of Ar, Re values can be found by using correlations or Ar vs Re graph.
Re can be then used to find the CD from Figure 1.4

2.2. Drag Coefficient of Non-Spherical Objects

For flow over non-spherical objects, their drag coefficient is described by their sphericity,
Ψ (Kumar 2013). It is the ratio of surface area of a sphere of volume equal to that of the particle,
to the surface area of the particle. For example, a cube has a sphericity of 0.806. The Re can be
found in the same way as the method for spherical objects at terminal velocity. C D can be read
from the graph that shows CD as a function of Re for different sphericities (Rhodes 2013).

2.3. Effect of Near-by Particles

In realistic flows, the velocity gradients around each particle are affected by the presence
of nearby particles (Zhang n.d.). So the normal drag correlations do not apply. The extent of the
effect from nearby particles can be categorized into three different categories depending on the
concentration of particles in the fluid and their respective CD values can be found.

1. For low concentration (c<0.05)

24
Slow flow: CD=
Re

High flow: same as for the method for single particle

2. Moderate concentration (0.05<c<0.3)

1
Slow flow: C D =C D o
( ( 1−c )
N−1 )
where N=4.65
1
(
High flow: C D =C D o ( 1−c ) M where)
3. Large concentration (c>0.3)
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For large concentrations, the porous media correlations have to be used to find the Φ
(Re’) which is the friction factor function for the pore friction rewritten in terms of
particle diameter.

3. REFERENCES
Benson, Tom. 2010. The Drag Coefficient. NASA. Accessed 4/3/2014,
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/dragco.html.
Green, D., and R. Perry. 2007. Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook, Eighth Edition:
McGraw-Hill Education.
Kumar, Perumal. 2013. Motions of Particles of Fluid, Curtin University Sarawak Malaysia. Miri.
Moaveni, S. 2011. Engineering Fundamentals: An Introduction to Engineering, Si Edition:
Cengage Learning.
Rhodes, M.J. 2013. Introduction to Particle Technology: Wiley.
Zhang, Jie. n.d. Motions of Particles through Fluid. Accessed 7 April,
http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/particle/cpe124p2.html.